Children in immediate danger: Emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection

Abstract

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of front-line practices regarding emergency removals in Finnish and Irish child protection. It examines how the responses to children's immediate danger are framed by legislation and how front-line practitioners assess the child's situation and make emergency placement decisions. The data consist of interviews with 16 Irish and 33 Finnish social workers. These child welfare protection systems respond differently to a task that appears to be similar. The Irish team-based practice rests on the social workers' shared assessment of the child's needs, and the formal decision is made by the courts (or police officers at nighttime); and the Finnish practice involves only one single social worker who makes both the assessment and the removal decision. The Irish system is tightly time regulated, whereas the Finnish system provides a more flexible time frame. Both approaches put a lot of stress on social workers' practice, which also includes creative workarounds (e.g., "planned emergency removals" in Finland). Future research will need to explore these features from the point of view of a child's right to protection.

Educational Beliefs of Special Education Teachers and Principals Working in Short-Term Emergency Shelter On-Site Schools

“…ESs are employed by child protection services to ensure the safety of vulnerable children who are unable to continue to reside in their homes, most typically due to child maltreatment (Hébert et al, 2018;Poe, 2006). The removal of a child from their home takes place in emergency situations when the child is threatened with imminent physical abuse, sexual abuse, egregious neglect, abandonment, and/or other family crises such as the arrest of a parent (Lamponen et al, 2019). Due to the emergency and unplanned nature of ES placements, children may feel stressed, shocked, and confused (Hindt et al, 2019).…”

“…As the journey of developing a professional identity is an ongoing process, it is important that educators' professional development programs refer to the importance of educational beliefs, and how they shape educators' work (Choi et al, 2021;Dery & Reingold, 2021), es-pecially with students at risk. Although schools cannot undo students' adverse life experiences (Lamponen et al, 2019;McGuire & Jackson, 2018), it is important to enhance educators' beliefs about the therapeutic potential in promoting at-risk students' academic, emotional-behavioral, and social development (Shonkoff et al, 2012). Hence, conceptualizing SETs beliefs as continuums rather than as separate and dichotomized beliefs allows for a deeper understanding of teachers' professional behaviors, practices, and students' outcomes in dynamic educational settings such as ESOSs (Choi et al, 2021;Eğmir & Çelik, 2019), and may contribute to the improvement of teaching performance in these educational settings.The findings of this study suggest that principals and teachers should identify and discuss similarities and differences in their educational beliefs.…”

Manifestations and Preconditions of Child Rights Protection—Specialists’ Aggression towards Caregivers and Child in the Situation of Child Removal from the Family

“…What does the children's view give us? Children are the ones who are removed, and they are "rescued" [44][45][46][47], but they are also the ones who very vividly experience aggression. It allows us to understand what traumatizes and injures children during the removal process.…”